Mary Ocher
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Mary Ocher

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Band Pop Singer/Songwriter

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"Colorful adventures in avant-pop/experimental art rock (Spex (Germany/international, magazine))"

Mary Ocher is one of one of those that clearly come from absolutely nowhere. From Russia originally, raised in Israel.
The now-exile mixed for a few years in the creative circles in Berlin.
She came originally with her then band Mary & The Baby Cheeses, then sprinkled her talent quickly in all conceivable directions and went on photoing, making film and to much success, continues as a solo artist. Now her new album Eden's coming out on Buback.

Ocher leaves nothing to chance in this work. she started working on it as early as 2011 with singer and producer Arish Ahmad Khan aka King Khan and entrusted him with the production. Her penchant for avant-pop - experimental art-rock she remains faithful to her direction and not altogether surprising new and unforeseen ideas.

Her lo-fi sound installations show that Ocher likes instruments with adventurous and confusing effects and over tones. What may initially seem like an unintentional complacency is actually set in a neatly planned arrangement - the result of a well thought out calculation, which is apparent after a closer inspection.
While "baby Indiana " makes use of flaring oriental folk, "No Lesson Learned " with its chamber-like harpsichord sounds like a children's book for a Hide-and -seek game in which it is quite clear who chases whom .

Lyrically less political than the last album, War Songs , but no less urgent, sings and snarls the Dada princess sometimes more, sometimes less comprehensible lines . Sometimes eccentric bulky expenditure , then again as essential as echo in the final three songs » Thunderbird, Eden Part I -IV " Ocher's voice appears as an unbreakable resources for unusual sounds. in "My town" she seeks confrontation with her troublesome childhood, says the line in the most beautiful aftermath of that time : " Hallelujah , pass the bottle / I hope you're traveling just fine / Home is where your heart is / Well mine is locked downtown . "

On two extraordinary evenings Mary Ocher will play today and tomorrow with numerous guests, her band - Your Government and new live videos from Eden.
Release party today in Golem , Hamburg, then tomorrow at Urban Spree, Berlin . - Spex (Germany/international, magazine)


"Colorful adventures in avant-pop/experimental art rock (Spex (Germany/international, magazine))"

Mary Ocher is one of one of those that clearly come from absolutely nowhere. From Russia originally, raised in Israel.
The now-exile mixed for a few years in the creative circles in Berlin.
She came originally with her then band Mary & The Baby Cheeses, then sprinkled her talent quickly in all conceivable directions and went on photoing, making film and to much success, continues as a solo artist. Now her new album Eden's coming out on Buback.

Ocher leaves nothing to chance in this work. she started working on it as early as 2011 with singer and producer Arish Ahmad Khan aka King Khan and entrusted him with the production. Her penchant for avant-pop - experimental art-rock she remains faithful to her direction and not altogether surprising new and unforeseen ideas.

Her lo-fi sound installations show that Ocher likes instruments with adventurous and confusing effects and over tones. What may initially seem like an unintentional complacency is actually set in a neatly planned arrangement - the result of a well thought out calculation, which is apparent after a closer inspection.
While "baby Indiana " makes use of flaring oriental folk, "No Lesson Learned " with its chamber-like harpsichord sounds like a children's book for a Hide-and -seek game in which it is quite clear who chases whom .

Lyrically less political than the last album, War Songs , but no less urgent, sings and snarls the Dada princess sometimes more, sometimes less comprehensible lines . Sometimes eccentric bulky expenditure , then again as essential as echo in the final three songs » Thunderbird, Eden Part I -IV " Ocher's voice appears as an unbreakable resources for unusual sounds. in "My town" she seeks confrontation with her troublesome childhood, says the line in the most beautiful aftermath of that time : " Hallelujah , pass the bottle / I hope you're traveling just fine / Home is where your heart is / Well mine is locked downtown . "

On two extraordinary evenings Mary Ocher will play today and tomorrow with numerous guests, her band - Your Government and new live videos from Eden.
Release party today in Golem , Hamburg, then tomorrow at Urban Spree, Berlin . - Spex (Germany/international, magazine)


"Putting some punch into the protest song (Haaretz (Israel, newspaper))"

When Mary Ocher participated in a singing competition at 14, Idan Reichel, who was working as a music arranger in the same competition, told her she would never be a singer. At 20, after hearing the same thing from a few other Israeli teachers, Ocher packed her bags and moved with her band, Mary and the Baby Cheeses, to Berlin.

She says she feels like part of the scenery there. "There are so many oddballs there, and the mainstream is not all that absolute so I'm really comfortable there," she says. "I can wear the most outlandish clothes I want and put on the most extreme makeup and that will be fine. There is a lot less sexual harassment there. Here I can't cross the street without someone yelling something at me, and I just want to disappear."

The Baby Cheeses played the songs Ocher wrote and composed on piano, acoustic guitar, cello, xylophone, coil and theremin ("an electronic instrument that sounds like a saw" ). "After a while I decided I wanted to do rock 'n' roll, and the people I was playing with didn't want to. They also wanted to come back to Israel and I absolutely did not want to."

Ocher, now 24, went off on her own, and two months ago released her first solo album, "War Songs."

On her website, http://www.maryocher.com, she describes it as "a rather eccentric presentation of what seems otherwise a very moderate tradition, the protest song." The songs on the album reflect her ambivalence about leaving Israel. "I felt in some place that I was a traitor, because I wasn't staying here to fight against what bothered me and instead ran away. I felt as if I couldn't do a thing to change the situation."

Ocher describes in her songs the destructive effects of life in a country under the constant shadow of military propaganda. She sometimes strays from the here and now to images from other times and places in history, in order to sketch a timeless picture of war.

The similarities with PJ Harvey's album, "Let England Shake," are striking. Ocher's singing style is also reminiscent of Harvey's. She doesn't like the comparison, though. "I really don't like her," she says. "I think she was much more blunt in the '90s, and then she softened up, and somehow, I didn't believe her anymore. I need something with more balls."

Her sources of inspiration, she says, include Lydia Lunch, Buffy Saint Marie and Nina Hagen. Others may argue that with her freak-folk style and her expressive singing, she sounds more like Joni Mitchell on acid.

One song on the album that deviates thematically from the rest is "Trampoline." "'Trampoline' made it onto the album because I wrote it during the same time and I felt that there was still a little protest in it, not about war, but about the issue of status - about role playing among men and women," she says. "I met a sickening group of men, each one of whom treated me like some kind of toy. To this day, I still can't fully define my place because I'm trying to challenge the feminine image. Today I feel like I'm in costume because I'm wearing a dress. I'm also very aggressive and like to hunt, and men don't always know how to handle that. This specific song is about my tremendous jealousy of women who are dolls, whose vulnerability everyone falls in love with, and their softness, and I'm the type that stands aside and laughs at men who are into that. I'm not really jealous of them because I think that my role is more challenging. I fight with men on the same battlefield."

Ocher is now in Israel. She comes every year to visit her parents, who like many other immigrants from the former Soviet Union, did not fare that well here.

Her father, who worked in a puppet theater for 20 years and took part in various radio and television programs, is now a forklift driver at a Coca Cola plant and her mother, an engineer by training, is a supermarket cashier.

"My parents don't really understand what I do, but they appreciate it because they see other people like it," she says. "My dad is very proud of the fact that I am so serious and consistent about it, but he also sometimes tells me, 'Listen, your music will never succeed because it's niche music.' That may be true, but today I'm performing so much that I'm able to live off of it.&amp - Haaretz (Israel, newspaper)


"Putting some punch into the protest song (Haaretz (Israel, newspaper))"

When Mary Ocher participated in a singing competition at 14, Idan Reichel, who was working as a music arranger in the same competition, told her she would never be a singer. At 20, after hearing the same thing from a few other Israeli teachers, Ocher packed her bags and moved with her band, Mary and the Baby Cheeses, to Berlin.

She says she feels like part of the scenery there. "There are so many oddballs there, and the mainstream is not all that absolute so I'm really comfortable there," she says. "I can wear the most outlandish clothes I want and put on the most extreme makeup and that will be fine. There is a lot less sexual harassment there. Here I can't cross the street without someone yelling something at me, and I just want to disappear."

The Baby Cheeses played the songs Ocher wrote and composed on piano, acoustic guitar, cello, xylophone, coil and theremin ("an electronic instrument that sounds like a saw" ). "After a while I decided I wanted to do rock 'n' roll, and the people I was playing with didn't want to. They also wanted to come back to Israel and I absolutely did not want to."

Ocher, now 24, went off on her own, and two months ago released her first solo album, "War Songs."

On her website, http://www.maryocher.com, she describes it as "a rather eccentric presentation of what seems otherwise a very moderate tradition, the protest song." The songs on the album reflect her ambivalence about leaving Israel. "I felt in some place that I was a traitor, because I wasn't staying here to fight against what bothered me and instead ran away. I felt as if I couldn't do a thing to change the situation."

Ocher describes in her songs the destructive effects of life in a country under the constant shadow of military propaganda. She sometimes strays from the here and now to images from other times and places in history, in order to sketch a timeless picture of war.

The similarities with PJ Harvey's album, "Let England Shake," are striking. Ocher's singing style is also reminiscent of Harvey's. She doesn't like the comparison, though. "I really don't like her," she says. "I think she was much more blunt in the '90s, and then she softened up, and somehow, I didn't believe her anymore. I need something with more balls."

Her sources of inspiration, she says, include Lydia Lunch, Buffy Saint Marie and Nina Hagen. Others may argue that with her freak-folk style and her expressive singing, she sounds more like Joni Mitchell on acid.

One song on the album that deviates thematically from the rest is "Trampoline." "'Trampoline' made it onto the album because I wrote it during the same time and I felt that there was still a little protest in it, not about war, but about the issue of status - about role playing among men and women," she says. "I met a sickening group of men, each one of whom treated me like some kind of toy. To this day, I still can't fully define my place because I'm trying to challenge the feminine image. Today I feel like I'm in costume because I'm wearing a dress. I'm also very aggressive and like to hunt, and men don't always know how to handle that. This specific song is about my tremendous jealousy of women who are dolls, whose vulnerability everyone falls in love with, and their softness, and I'm the type that stands aside and laughs at men who are into that. I'm not really jealous of them because I think that my role is more challenging. I fight with men on the same battlefield."

Ocher is now in Israel. She comes every year to visit her parents, who like many other immigrants from the former Soviet Union, did not fare that well here.

Her father, who worked in a puppet theater for 20 years and took part in various radio and television programs, is now a forklift driver at a Coca Cola plant and her mother, an engineer by training, is a supermarket cashier.

"My parents don't really understand what I do, but they appreciate it because they see other people like it," she says. "My dad is very proud of the fact that I am so serious and consistent about it, but he also sometimes tells me, 'Listen, your music will never succeed because it's niche music.' That may be true, but today I'm performing so much that I'm able to live off of it.&amp - Haaretz (Israel, newspaper)


"The freedom of the other (Zeit (Germany, newspaper))"

Small feet on the letter A move over the right wrist of Mary Ocher.
She has even designed the tattoo herself a few years ago in Berlin . When asked about the meaning she sometimes replies with nonsense and claims the A stands for Anything or Arsehole. Today, she is gracious and reveals that it stands for anarchism.

"At 16 or 17, I have noticed that this is the ideology I identify with the most," explains Ocher, in stark contrast with her peroxide blonde hair, huge glasses and an eighties leather jacket from commercial anarcho- punk. No less serious, however, is her anarchy. If you sit with the 26 -year-old for an hour, she'd only drink a single sip and always squat upright on the edge of a chair. For Ocher the notion is much less revolved around self-indulgence or the abolition of state institutions, but rather about individual freedom and rights. Freedom from conventions and the freedom from sturdy restriction, which always includes the freedom of others. "I wish that hierarchical structures wouldn't be taken for granted. When I work with others, I try not to take too much control, but to give others the freedom to express themselves as much as possible".

A very productive cooperation has just emerged:
In the end of next week, Eden, Ocher's second solo album is coming out. she has recorded it with Canadian producer King Khan in his home studio in Berlin. "It was almost as if it was all recorded by itself" , tells Mary Ocher. Layer by layer, choosing the best instrumentation, inviting guest musicians. The result is a shimmering lo-fi singer-songwriter record whose spectrum ranges from fragile piano ballad, via raw garage songs to epic ambient synthesizer experiments. Just as unpredictable as the concept is the sound and a song that shoots from deep rumbling suddenly reaches unimaginable heights just to turn into gentle whispering in the next moment.

"As a child I heard heaps of MTV music and I liked R & B singers like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey - The ladies with the big lungs. Today I find Yoko Ono and Meredith Monk much more interesting," says Ocher. She emphasizes that she never wanted to sound the same and always seeking the best possible expression of the respective text. What it is about, is often not instantly apparent, because the texts tend to be associative, poetic. "The android sea / Knows not to beg for anything / Like humans do / Do not punish me for what I want" - so goes "The Android sea". Maybe it's about real loss, but perhaps only imagination. - Zeit (Germany, newspaper)


"The freedom of the other (Zeit (Germany, newspaper))"

Small feet on the letter A move over the right wrist of Mary Ocher.
She has even designed the tattoo herself a few years ago in Berlin . When asked about the meaning she sometimes replies with nonsense and claims the A stands for Anything or Arsehole. Today, she is gracious and reveals that it stands for anarchism.

"At 16 or 17, I have noticed that this is the ideology I identify with the most," explains Ocher, in stark contrast with her peroxide blonde hair, huge glasses and an eighties leather jacket from commercial anarcho- punk. No less serious, however, is her anarchy. If you sit with the 26 -year-old for an hour, she'd only drink a single sip and always squat upright on the edge of a chair. For Ocher the notion is much less revolved around self-indulgence or the abolition of state institutions, but rather about individual freedom and rights. Freedom from conventions and the freedom from sturdy restriction, which always includes the freedom of others. "I wish that hierarchical structures wouldn't be taken for granted. When I work with others, I try not to take too much control, but to give others the freedom to express themselves as much as possible".

A very productive cooperation has just emerged:
In the end of next week, Eden, Ocher's second solo album is coming out. she has recorded it with Canadian producer King Khan in his home studio in Berlin. "It was almost as if it was all recorded by itself" , tells Mary Ocher. Layer by layer, choosing the best instrumentation, inviting guest musicians. The result is a shimmering lo-fi singer-songwriter record whose spectrum ranges from fragile piano ballad, via raw garage songs to epic ambient synthesizer experiments. Just as unpredictable as the concept is the sound and a song that shoots from deep rumbling suddenly reaches unimaginable heights just to turn into gentle whispering in the next moment.

"As a child I heard heaps of MTV music and I liked R & B singers like Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey - The ladies with the big lungs. Today I find Yoko Ono and Meredith Monk much more interesting," says Ocher. She emphasizes that she never wanted to sound the same and always seeking the best possible expression of the respective text. What it is about, is often not instantly apparent, because the texts tend to be associative, poetic. "The android sea / Knows not to beg for anything / Like humans do / Do not punish me for what I want" - so goes "The Android sea". Maybe it's about real loss, but perhaps only imagination. - Zeit (Germany, newspaper)


Discography


- War songs (2011, Haute Areal)
singles:
"On the streets of hard labor"
"The sounds of war"

- 7" untitled EP, 2011 (Haute Areal)

- EDEN (2013, Buback/Haute Areal)
singles:
"Baby Indiana"
"The android sea"

- I, human (October 2013. EP/single)

Photos

Bio

Often described in the press as a big framed, big haired monster, with references to mighty drag queens and tiny weary nerds. Ocher is neither.
A self-resigned high school drop out, member of an art movement, film maker, and a well known character of the European underground.
Hopping from project to project, and from one collaboration to another, performing quite often at art festivals, queer parties, galleries and multimedia events.
Uncategorizible, cross-genre, and direly unique, Ocher's created a universe entirely of her own - one that the misfits run and everyone that knows the feeling is most welcome to join.